


Window To The World

by eren_writes



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 10:16:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12319023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eren_writes/pseuds/eren_writes
Summary: Levi doesn't know why he searches.He doesn't even know that he is looking for something - someone.An invisible thread pulls him from one city to the next, until a chance encounter at his hotel window reveals to be the one person he's spent his life looking for.Will he recognise them, or will they slip forever through his fingers, faceless as the people he watches wherever he goes?





	Window To The World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [erenbaeger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/erenbaeger/gifts).



> This is a special dedication to erenbaegerr and our weekend in Paris.
> 
> I wrote this while I waited for you to arrive, in that hour of time I had free with nothing else to do but twiddle my thumbs and check my hair was okay.
> 
> I hope you like it.

I could hear them. 

People far below, their voices reaching up to me as if to include me. I could hear them, their language one I didn’t understand. Somehow it didn’t matter. Their words wrapped around me, a rare delicacy for my ears to feast upon. I listened to the chorus as their voices joined together into an incoherent mess of sounds I would never be able to make, fascinated. 

I loved people. I loved the way their lives carried on regardless of whether or not I was there. They were not aware that I was their audience, or that they even had an audience to begin with.

Over the rise and fall of their conversations, I listened to the cars. The hum of engines, the angry blast of a horn, the faint odor of petrol in the air left in their wake. They raced down the narrow city streets, always hurrying. Though it was humans that controlled them, I always felt people transcended into different beings when they took over the wheel. They became separated from their walking brethren, the rules changing to suit them accordingly. 

It was very much like… I can’t remember what I was going to say. 

Odd. The thought is lost.

I watched the lives of these people unfold below me, my vantage point high above, with a curious eye and a keen ear. I was breathing in the nighttime air, tasting new smells the same way my ears dined on the rich language, my appetite insatiable. I could sit for hours and observe them; the lone woman waiting anxiously by green gates that lead to places unknown. She would look down at her phone, then both ways down the street, before back at her phone. I wondered who she waited for, the same way I wondered where those gates would open up to. Every few minutes, she adjusted the black bag that had slipped from her shoulder, and checked her phone. 

I wrote it down, every detail I could think of, looking away for only a matter of seconds.

When I turned back, she was gone. 

It wasn’t until I saw a couple huddled beneath an umbrella that I realised it was raining. I could hear it now, the rustle of the rain as it fell to the busy earth below. For a few seconds the rain was heavy, the droplets illuminated by the orange glow of the street lamp opposite falling fast. It didn’t dampen my viewing, only made the chill biting at my toes a little sharper. The weather was now far from ideal to be sitting by an open window at an ever increasingly late hour, but I didn’t mind. Just as the people in the bars and restaurants situated five floors below didn’t let it bother them, neither did I let it disturb me.

Two floors up from ground level, the window three panes in and in the centre, a light was now on. A waiter set a table, round and decorated with a pale red cloth. A woman came into view, removing her dark jacket and draping it over the only chair I could see. Her sweater was light blue, and her hair was short and blonde. She seemed older, probably mid-forties. She walked out of my view, and though my eyes lingered on, she never returned. Shortly thereafter, the light went out and the little round table was cast into darkness.

By now the rain had stopped, though the coldness stayed behind like a bitter memory. 

It would soon be time for me to move away from this window, to engage in my own activities and carry on the story that was my own existence. I was reluctant to let go, to bid a silent farewell to those I’d been watching, but I knew this couldn’t go on forever.

Tomorrow beckoned and with it the endless possibilities I wanted to explore, such as the green gate and whatever I would find there. Maybe in the evening, I could sit here once again and observe the people, touching upon the edges of their lives without them ever knowing I was there to begin with. Perhaps I would even go to a different city.

It was with that thought that I noticed the building opposite mine. A new light was on, only this time it was the floor above the round table. I couldn’t see much to begin with; white curtains obscured the view within, until they shuffled and parted clumsily. I watched with renewed interest, any thoughts of moving from my spot now abandoned.

The window opened, first the left pane and then the right, opening the room to the world beyond, the same as mine. I watched as a man stepped forward, leaning on the black railing, the sleeves of his grey shirt rolled back around his elbows. I could tell he was younger than me, his youthful face untouched by the weathering of age. I found myself tracing the wrinkles around my eyes enviously. 

That’s when his eyes met mine.

My notebook fell from my lap with a clatter, and I cursedd under my breath as I reached to reclaim it, feeling like a fool. I’d not only been caught staring into the privacy of another person’s abode, I’d made an idiot of myself too. He’d surely seen my blunder, and now I wished I’d left sooner, to take the shower I should have been having. 

When I plucked up the courage to look back at his window, he was still there. And he was still watching me. Of all the people — it had to be this one that didn’t turn out the light and leave.

Even from this distance, I could tell he was watching me. From the slight tilt of his head, to the way he tried to hide it whenever I boldly returned the gesture. We were playing a game, sneaking looks whenever we could, whenever the other was busy pretending to look at something else. It was a game I didn’t particularly want to play, and yet I couldn’t get up and abandon it. I was invested, there was something about him that made me want to stay. Something in the casual way he leaned out of his window, in the way he ran his hands through his hair, messing up the short strands. I couldn’t tell what colour it was; the lighting behind him made it difficult to tell. I wonder how much of me he could make out, and what it was that drew his attention so keenly?

I was writing it down, this long distance encounter. I noted the way he kept messing and straightening out his hair, or how he struggled to find a comfortable position for his arms on the railing. I wasn’t interested in seeing anyone else. I only wanted to observe him in the same way he was observing me.

I didn’t expect him to turn away, to talk to someone I couldn’t see. My heart beat fast as he stepped back, and I felt it collapse as he retreated behind the curtains. It was over, then.

Our game had ended. Like the countless others before him, the moment where our lives connected was finished, passing seamlessly into the next few minutes.

I remained where I was, ignoring the tremble in my bones as the cold air sunk into me, willing harder than I ever had for him to come back to the window.

He never did, and the next day I left for another city, never knowing what it was that connected us.


End file.
